


darling, don't leave me waiting (one night, i will be your star)

by punkrockbadger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Rare Pairings, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Narcissa visits the Mirror of Erised once, after the Second War ends and things have calmed down slightly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darling, don't leave me waiting (one night, i will be your star)

**Author's Note:**

> For teddylpun on tumblr. Merry Christmas, Ellie!

Narcissa visits the Mirror of Erised once, after the Second War ends and things have calmed down slightly.

The mirror stands, strikingly regal in its brilliant simplicity, and she traces the letters across the top before daring to look in the mirror itself. And she has spent years yearning for what she sees, so she is not surprised in the slightest. No, only a familiar tired feeling stirring in her bones, weighting her down further, and Narcissa wonders if it will one day drag her to hell to pay for all that she has done. There is not much that she has done, these past years, that is worth redeeming her for.

She watches a slight blond girl, clad in green and silver, sneak into a garishly red and gold locker room, watches her wait on one of the benches until her love emerges, hair still wet from her shower and clothes slightly damp from Marlene having, once again, brought a change of clothes but nothing to dry off with.

Marlene’s eyes brighten at the mere sight of the Narcissa in the mirror, and the Narcissa outside the mirror, twenty years older and twenty years’ worth of unhappiness weighing on her shoulders, turns away and walks straight out the door.

She never mentions this to anyone, because she herself doesn’t remember.

(Narcissa draws the memory out with shaking hands, entombs it in one of Lucius’ crystalline flasks and shatters it again and again until there is nothing but dust and silver liquid seeping into the carpet.)

* * *

Marlene doesn’t come to the wedding.

That is all Narcissa can think, as she walks up the aisle to Lucius, who looks disgustingly proud of himself. Marlene has not come to give her away into the hands of this man who she knows to be a monster. It is not her fault, however, because Narcissa’s mother had scoffed at the idea of allowing a blood traitor anywhere near her daughter’s perfect wedding. For the same reason, James Potter and her one-time cousin, who would have been invited under any other circumstance, were carefully left off the list.

But she still wishes she could draw strength from her, like she always has, in this moment when she needs her most.

As she leaves the ceremony, hand clutched tight in Lucius’, she thinks she catches a glimpse of Marlene, hiding in the back of the crowd.

(She does not try to meet her eyes, just so she can still believe what she knows to be untrue.)

* * *

“You will give me an heir.” Lucius says, chin tilted just far enough upward to remind Narcissa, and she nods. She has learned, in the first half-year of their marriage, that denying Lucius is tantamount to rebelling against the law, and she knows better than to do either of those things. She has been raised for this, to endure a man’s wishes and wants, and she feels no need for children, does not feel the need to bring some innocent soul into this hell that she lives in.

“I am doing my best, husband, but I will try harder.” That response seems to satisfy Lucius, and he sits back in his chair, smirking as he toys with his dinner. Narcissa goes back to staring at the peas, violently stabbing them when Lucius is not paying attention, for he would say something about violence not being ladylike if he saw her taking her rage out on vegetables.

Narcissa, much like her cousin Sirius, has a whole list of comebacks ready before the words are even spoken.

(She, unlike Sirius, never quite gets to use them.)

* * *

It has been two years since Marlene has seen Narcissa, but she still lets her one time girlfriend in when she opens the door to find Narcissa shivering on the doorstep. It is late on a night in middle of December and the snow is falling intermittently, and this is no good time for anyone to be outside.

Marlene grudgingly steps aside, waving Narcissa in, and their eyes meet as Narcissa crosses the threshold. Marlene shuts the door behind her, chancing a quick look around. “Why are you here?”

“I made a mistake, Marlene.” Narcissa’s voice shakes. “I married Lucius Malfoy.”

“Well, we all knew that was a mistake.” Two years ago, Marlene would have ended this statement with a snicker, but now they are all nearing twenty and fighting a war. Although, unlike her other friends, she is fighting against her lover rather than at their side.

“It was a mistake, Marlene.” Narcissa says, the shaking in her voice now manifesting in her limbs, and she looks Marlene straight in the eye in a way that she hasn’t in years. “I should have married you.”

“That’s… that’s big.” Marlene nods slowly, after a few minutes of silence.

“It’s true.” Narcissa forces all the conviction she has into these words, frowning just slightly, and is surprised when Marlene kisses every trace of doubt she has from her lips, draws them away and spits them out onto the floor where they belong, and send a soft smile her way.

“You know, our wedding would have been a mess.” Marlene sits back on the couch, stretching her arms. “At least Sirius would have cried.”

“Sirius is an ugly crier. I don’t think you’d want to see that.” Narcissa shudders and Marlene laughs as if she could move mountains with the force of her joy.

(Narcissa thinks, later, that maybe Marlene laughed that way because she knew she could.)

* * *

The charm tells her that the baby is a boy one September morning, as a bruise blooms purple and blue, a splash of color across the high cheekbone her mother used to praise her for, and her first thought is of Marlene.

Narcissa is a dimming light, a weakly flickering flame curbed by the heavy weight that is Lucius, sucking oxygen away in some sick little game, and this baby will have the gift of the rest of her. That is all she can give him, this last bit of her hope, and perhaps he will be a little less like his father for it. Maybe he will be her son and not Lucius’, if she tries hard enough. Maybe he will have all the soft parts of her that Marlene treasures and Lucius scoffs at. Maybe he can be some kind of perfect.

She hides the swell of her belly until she no longer can, and then slowly stops her visits to Marlene when she can no longer hide what Lucius has done to her. Maybe it is shame, and maybe it is a need to keep this ruin she has become from her love, but whatever it is, she hides within the walls of Malfoy Manor from spring on, makes new friends with the peacocks rather than finding peace in her old ones.

(Draco, who Lucius names, is born with summer’s first burst of heat, and she wonders if that is the small star she has held within herself making a display of his light to the world.)

* * *

“Blood traitors”, Lucius scoffs, as the Bones family’s murder makes the front page of the Daily Prophet. Narcissa pretends not to notice the minute traces of blood under his fingernails, visible despite how many charms he uses to try and rid himself of responsibility. “Who’s next? Black? McKinnon?”

He doesn’t miss the shudder she tries to hide at the sound of Marlene’s name. “Perhaps I should put in a good word with the Dark Lord for your precious pet. She’s hardly more than an animal, associating with Mudbloods and the like.”

“She’s not anyone’s pet.” Narcissa says, more adamantly than she’d expected. “And she’s certainly nothing of mine.”

“I see.” Lucius smirks, slow and dangerous, and Narcissa tries to calm her thumping heart. Marlene is gone and it is her fault. Marlene has always been in danger, has always been too deep in these things for her own good, but now Marlene will be gone because Lucius _knows_.

(Narcissa sends owl after owl, but none of them are ever returned, and as time goes on, the letters become more tears than words, blurred smudges of ink staining parchment and hands alike.)

* * *

When Lucius returns one afternoon, shortly after Draco’s birthday, and doesn’t bother to clean the blood out from under his fingernails, she knows it is over.

“She died screaming.” Lucius says, over dinner, smirking as if he is simply relating some gruesome tale he’d heard at work. “Not for you, for mercy. A pity, though, it would have been more of a show if she’d begged for you instead.”

Narcissa bows her head, trying to keep tears from falling, because Lucius _must_ be lying. His lies aren’t anything new to her, they’re a daily occurrence, but this has too much truth in it to be falsified.

Marlene cannot be dead, because she promised she would never leave Narcissa alone.

“Not that there’s much to beg for.” Lucius scoffs, before going back to picking at his food.

Narcissa nods.

(If she couldn’t keep Marlene here, perhaps she was not worth staying for in the first place.)

* * *

She never sleeps in the master bedroom again, after Lucius is sent away to prison once and for all, instead taking the room down the hall that she’d stayed in, before she’d been married off and dragged down to hell for it, and Draco understands. He conjures a mattress by her bed and sleeps on her floor, at nights, instead of in his own room, and she understands.

It’s not easy to be alone at any time, and certainly not this one.

“She would have loved you”, Narcissa says aloud, running a hand through sleeping Draco’s still baby soft hair, and she startles slightly as he curiously looks up at her, looking much closer to eight than eighteen.

“Who would have, Mother?” He asks gently, voice weighted down with dreams and hopes that she does not remember having at eighteen (does not remember having at all), and Narcissa sighs.

“No one of importance, Draco.” She tries to smile, but it fails, a bitterly empty imitation resting heavily on her lips. “You need your sleep.”

(Narcissa stopped dreaming long ago.)


End file.
